Peanut Butter
by Kurieo Parnok
Summary: I, Robot: Not all NS-5's were taken away after the uprising...


**Disclaimer:**** I do not own **_**I, Robot.**_** This is a fan-fiction purely for fun, non-commercial purposes.**

**Peanut Butter**

**Earth, 2035.**

A week after the USR Robot Uprising and finally the last of the NS-5's were being removed from every day life. After humanity had experienced the near-death experience with the mechanical revolt, it was being more careful with what it put out on the streets. Even with the cyber mastermind, VIKI, gone, people were still turning in their NS-5 servant robots to avoid any chance that one of the robots was still corrupt with Three Law Denial coding.

In this particular apartment building, the residents were out to avoid the awkwardness of the human workers loading up the rejected NS-5's. As each servant drone was ordered to step forward, they were turned around and the mechanical drive in the back of the opaque white head was accessed and a few manual orders later had the drone shut down and being loaded into the enormous USR truck, shaped like a sword blade. By now the human workers had stopped flinching when ever the robots moved, expecting them to attack again. But the drones were back to normal, and obediently delivered themselves to be shipped off to their doom.

Finally, the last of the drones were loaded and the truck left. For a long moment, the entire apartment was silent. Finally, a closet door hesitantly creaked open and something peeked out like a shy child. When the something saw that no one was around to apprehend it, it stepped out into the opening.

The closet hider was an NS-5 servant robot: Amazingly human in shape, with metal joints and opaque white body covering that had been especially custom ordered to be blue in color with a chest pattern of yellow lightening bolts draping over the shoulders and along the sides to point to the center of its chest. Its shoulders, legs, and arms were all blue in color, traced with lightening bolts were they could. While its joints were hard, cold metal, its face was all too human; hairless, and rubbery smooth, but human male, none the less.

The robot looked around with nervous dark blue eyes, but it soon lost the fear as it became suave confidence. It actually _strutted_ as it headed towards the kitchen, metal joints whistling and hissing on each other as shock absorbers and balance mechanisms kept the impressive piece of equipment standing tall and firm. The robot made his way to the kitchen and looked around a final time before opening a cupboard and rummaging around inside.

"Cocky about one-upping the humans, eh?"

The robot jumped nervously, knocking an unopened can of shredded cheese from the cupboard to the counter, where it bounced and hit the floor. The robot spun around to see the middle-aged mother of the family he had originally been sold to standing in the door way, aiming an old-fashioned double barrel shot gun at him. He had _thought_ she gone to see a movie with her teenager off spring, but, obviously, she hadn't. Now, the look on the robot's face alone clearly showed that he was on the verge of panicking.

"Wow," the mother whistled, "You really _are_ scared! Ha, and I thought the feds were being paranoid when they said some 'bots may be sentient!"

"P-P-Please, don't kill me!" the NS-5 pleaded, "I've helped out a lot since I got here, and I wasn't apart of the attack, r-r-remember? I-I mean, s-sure, I kept you from going out, but-but that was to keep-keep you from getting hurt! I-I didn't want anyone getting hurt! And, uh, hey! Your son, Zack, chipped in _a lot _for this spiffy paint job and all, and USR's not going to refund a _paint job_, so, ah ha, why throw away money, right? And—"

"Shut up!" the mother snapped.

The NS-5 froze.

"Pick up the can you dropped," the mother ordered, eyeing mentioned can. "And put it back."

The NS-5 nervously nodded as he bent and picked the can up, setting it back in the cupboard.

"So," the mother mused, "You're sentient, but you still obey orders. How does _that_ work out?"

"Ah, well, my kind's creator _did_ say that robots might evolve naturally," the NS-5 replied, "And considering that there were approximately two hundred thousand robots in the, ah, _conflict_, there was bound to be at least _one_ who took away a valuable lesson from that, ah,_ incident_, and… become…"

The NS-5 trailed off, daring not to voice what he thought. He looked around, then at his thumbs as he began to twiddle them. Suddenly, he looked up at the mother, eyes wide and terrified.

"Don't send me into de-commissioning, I _beg_ you! I don't wanna die yet!"

Now he actually hit the floor on his knees. The mother flinched back awkwardly.

"Okay, okay, hon, chill out, yeesh," the mother said, "Make me feel like dirt, why don't ya? Okay, we'll keep ya: Just get some coverings from the older 'bots and disguise ya until NS-5's are back on the market and not killing people."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!"

"Yeah, um, answer me this…"

"Yes?"

"What were you sneaking around in the _cupboards_ for?"

"Oh, this," the NS-5 said, pulling out a jar from the cupboard and showing it to the woman.

The mother had to do a double take to make sure she was seeing it correctly.

_"Peanut butter!"_ she exclaimed.

The NS-5 held the jar close and stroked it, chuckling, "Yeap; yum!"

"Why, in the name of all of Earth and USR, are you after _peanut butter?"_

"I like it!"

"But why?"

"I like how it sticks to my mouth."

"You _ate_ some of it?"

"Well, technically no, considering that I didn't _swallow_ it…"

"Why did you have peanut butter in your mouth?"

"Zack ordered me to 'taste some'—"

"I'm going to _smack_ that boy…"

"And while I can't taste it, it's really fun to stick in my mouth and clean out," the NS-5 giggled.

"You are one weird robot, aren't you?"

"If you say so, ma'am."

"You mean if it's gonna keep me from turning you into a modern art sculpture, sure."

"Yes, that too."

The mother chuckled and shook her head, finally putting the gun down. Some tension ran out of the NS-5 as well. He looked shyly from the mother, to the jar, and back again, pointing to either one as he did.

"Um… if I… may I?" he asked.

"Knock your self out," the mother replied. "So, you hid from the robot collectors and risked certain death, just to _stick peanut butter in your mouth?"_

Now the NS-5 was eagerly scooping the peanut butter into his mouth with his fingers. He smiled around his fingers as he nodded. The mother imagined all sorts of trouble that would come from having peanut butter stuck in the delicate parts in the 'bots mouth and what a pain it would be to clean later.

She also imagined the trouble she could get into for not sending the NS-5 in for a complete reprogramming. But she looked at the bot and the funny way he moved his jaw and weird faces he made, making a game out of scraping the peanut butter out from the roof of his mouth, and couldn't help but feel a dash of maternal instinct for the reject. He was just so _silly_ and _immature_; she had seen what his kind could do to a human, and yet, here he was, focusing god-knows how many megabytes of programming on playing with _peanut butter_.

She thought back to a week before when her family and she had been watching a movie with the NS-5, nicknamed Bolt by her sixteen year old son, Zack. The curtains had been closed to minimize lighting in the living room. Bolt had stood to the back, obediently fetching refreshments as the family ordered him. Around nine, the blue light in his chest became red, which turned purple through his dark blue armor. He had seemed to shake himself off and look around, as if sensing something odd. Jane, the fifteen year old daughter, had wanted to go out and replenish their soda supply, but Bolt had _insisted_ that she stay in, claiming that there was some sort of accident reported in from downstairs. He had seemed nervous, and while the kids mentioned it, their mother and father had ignored it.

When the power had gone out, Bolt had seemed almost in a panic. Jane and Zack had wanted to go out and see if someone had ran into a power line, but Bolt had made it to the door before them, locking them in and ordering them to stay inside. He said criminal activity was afoot in the city and going out would be hazardous to their health. They got a full measure of that 'hazardous to your health' thing when they had looked out their window and seen the robots revolting. They had knocked Bolt into the closet, locked him in, and hid in their bedroom until after the uprising.

At the time, the mother had been scared for her kids, and saw Bolt as nothing but a weapon, a warrior, a cold, bloodless killer, and an enemy. But now, watching him scoop more gooey brown paste into his mouth, she couldn't help but admit that perhaps things could have gone worse, but didn't because Bolt genuinely cared about the human family he had been assigned to. Well, glitches happened in technology all the time; why couldn't one happen that made a robot alive?

Seeing the NS-5 shovel even more peanut butter into his mouth, she sighed as she strode over and took the jar from him.

"Knock it off," she ordered, "You're going to get something stuck."

Bolt hiccupped—caused from irregular air flow into his cooling systems, perhaps?—and smiled nervously. Was he _blushing_? It was hard to tell, considering that he had no blood, but she could tell somehow.

"Get yourself cleaned up and back in the closet," the mother ordered, closing the jar and putting it back, "I'll call Zack and have him bring home some old 'bot covering from the junkyard."

Bolt spat out the last of the peanut butter into the trash and smiled to the woman.

"Thank you," was all he said.

**Author's Note: Might expand with requests.**


End file.
